Al Pacino's Tell-All Interview Amid Fears He's On Last Legs: 'I Tell Death to Go Away!'
Ailing Al Pacino has revealed he's got his biggest role on his hands to date – cheating death aged 85.
The Godfather films legend has a 16-month-old tot on his hands with his ex Noor Alfallah, 30, and wants to hang in there as long as possible, RadarOnline can reveal.
He's just written a memoir Sonny Boy so his kids and fans can read a chronicle of his life.
The book tracks his rise from humble beginnings to Oscar-winning icon and has enough drama to fill several Hollywood screenplays: family tragedy, epic romances and a fortune made and lost.
"It was due," he says of deciding to write the memoir. "I'm in my 85th year. When you get there and you start experiencing age, you understand why they do put things down."
The famously private Scarface actor-who titled the book after the childhood nickname his mother, Rose, gave him from the Al Jolson song of the same name says he wanted to leave a record for his loved ones, including his four children, Julie, 35 (with acting coach Jan Tarrant), 23-year-old twins Anton and Olivia (with actress Beverly D'Angelo) and Roman, 16 months (with movie producer Alfallah).
Pacino added: "At least according to me, I've had quite a big life."
Fatherhood, he said, "changed me for life," and his desire to act more in the future keeps him going.
He does ponder mortality, but he pushes that thought aside with a few stern words. Pacino added: "I tell it [death] to go away."
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And before The Godfather turned themes of loyalty and betrayal into movie gold, Pacino learned a valuable lesson about the code of silence when he was just 6.
In Sonny Boy, Pacino recalls coming home to his tenement apartment in New York's South Bronx, where he lived with his mom and grandparents.
He told his grandfather about tattling on a misbehaving classmate. "So you're a rat, huh?" his grandfather asked as Pacino slid to the floor in shame. After that, Pacino wrote in the book: "I have never ratted on anyone again."
He was launched into the big time when The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola saw him in a play and cast him as Michael Corleone in the 1972 mobster classic.
As his profile rose thanks to follow-up films like Serpico, so too did his reputation as a too-cool-for-school snob who skipped awards shows and snubbed press opportunities.
The truth is he struggled to deal with fame and turned to liquor and drugs to cope. "I started to forget things at a very young age-they called them blackouts, so I got nervous," he said. Pacino has been sober for decades.
"I'm surprised that I did say some of the stuff I said," admitted Pacino, who also writes about losing a multimillion-dollar fortune in the 2000s, thanks to a shady accountant and his own spending, and a near-death experience from COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic before vaccines were available.
"I fainted, and when I opened my eyes, there were six paramedics in my living room," he says. "I didn't have a pulse. Everybody thought I was dead."
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